The class of 1957 still has plenty to offer today’s young lawyers, including imparting the core values of their generation — dedication, sacrifice, hard work, law and order, respect for authority, patriotism, delayed reward, duty before pleasure, adhering to rules, and honor — according to U.S. Circuit Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat.
“The challenge . . . is to transfer these values to younger generations, to those who are occupying our courthouses,” Tjoflat told a roomful of lawyers, their families, and friends attending the Bar’s 50-Year Member Luncheon at the Annual Convention in Orlando.
Tjoflat, a member of the class of 1957 who served in the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps during the Korean War, said senior lawyers need to mentor younger lawyers about what it means to be dedicated and have respect for authority, to be patient when your client is in a hurry to sue, and to discuss what hard work “does for the soul.”
“What I remember the most about the law practice back in those days was the collegiality of the members of the Bar,” said Tjoflat, who, following a decade in private practice in Jacksonville, was appointed to the Florida trial bench in 1968 and to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in 1970. “A handshake was a real handshake.”
In 1975, Tjoflat was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He became a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on October 1, 1981, the day the Fifth Circuit was divided into two circuits — the new Fifth Circuit and the 11th Circuit.
Tjoflat reminisced about taking the bar exam in July of 1957. The test consisted of 36 essay questions — six given in the morning and six more in the afternoon during a three-day span. There were no bar prep courses back then, he said. Instead, those sitting for the exam peppered each other with questions leading up to the test.
Back in those days, Tjoflat said, experienced lawyers routinely took newcomers under their wings.
“We had a lot of older people who served as mentors, really, for our upbringing,” Tjoflat said. “They were all out of the GI generation, many of those who served in World War I and some in World War II.”
He also said when he was a young lawyer those who did litigation work spent a considerable amount of time in court, unlike today’s trial lawyers.
“The reason they spent more time (in court) back then is we didn’t have so many frivolous cases,” he said, recalling that practitioners then took seriously the notion that they were not just attorneys, but counselors at law, too.
“Our first obligation was to counsel the client,” said Tjoflat, noting that the clients of that era wanted to put lawsuits behind them as quickly as possible.
He said law was still practiced in a “very genteel sort of way” when he was appointed to the circuit bench in 1968 and judges knew all the lawyers practicing before them.
“Of the seven years I spent — two on the state circuit court and five on the district court — I can’t recall a discovery dispute, not once,” said Tjoflat. “It just seemed to be the lawyers were able to get together in a collegial sort of way and set their position one way or another by agreement.
“There was no scorched earth policy that I basically witness today,” said Tjoflat.
He said the practice of law began to change in the late ’70s, when the nation witnessed a “litigation explosion” and along with it, a demand for more judges. More judges sitting on the appellate bench, he said, started to create instability in the rule of law.
“Can you imagine hearing a case en banc with 26 judges sitting around the table?” he asked. “The consequences of that in the federal system — and in the state system — are very undesirable.”
With a 26-judge appellate court — 35 if you count the senior judges — there are nearly 5,000 three-judge panel possibilities for each appeal, Tjoflat said. That makes the rule of law more unstable, “because you had so many judges deciding.” That, in turn, generates more litigation, he said.
“That begat the loss of respect for the rule of law on the part of our citizens whose rights would be watered down as the law becomes more unstable, and so they did not know where they stood,” he said.
The federal district courts are now at a point where they can hardly be split anymore “because you can’t have a one state circuit,” he said.
One of the remedies for the ills afflicting today’s judicial system, Tjoflat said, is to return to settling suits without the court’s involvement.
“The whole process of settling disputes has moved from the law office into the courts,” Tjoflat said, noting that now all too often cases are filed and the dispute worked through the court system only to be settled on the eve of trial.
Twenty-five years ago, he said, a trial lawyer would try 10 to 14 cases a year. Now they are lucky to try one or two a year. The rest of the time is eaten up in the litigation process.
“We have exhausted the judicial system as a mechanism for dispute resolution,” Tjoflat said, noting the increasing use of mediation, arbitration, and the hiring of retired judges to hear disputes.
“The silent generation has one hell of a lot to offer to the younger generations in this profession,” said Tjoflat.
— Courtesy The Florida Bar News